Queensland Monthly Climate Summary April 2007

Summary

April brought no
relief to the prolonged dry period affecting the Southeast
and parts of Central Queensland, with record low April rainfall
reported in some places. Brisbane received just 3.2 mm during the
month, compared to the long-term average of 92.5 mm. Rainfall
totals varied considerably
elsewhere in the state.

Rainfall

Rainfall
was mixed across the state during April. Many places
reported below
average totals, particularly in a band from the northwest to the
southeast and much of the east coast. Parts of the Northern Goldfields,
northern Cape York Peninsula and the southwest of the state received
above average totals, while rainfall closer to average was reported
elsewhere. Refer to the maps of total rainfall and rainfall deciles.
A
number of places in
the southeast recorded their lowest April rainfall total on record.
These
include Archerfield with 5.2 mm (average 79.6 mm, 76 years of record),
Mt Glorious with 4 mm (average 123 mm, 74 years of record), and Somerset
Dam with 2.6 mm (average 70 mm, 71 years of record). A full list of new rainfall records appears below.
This follows a very
poor start to the year for the southeast of the state. Areas extending from the
Capricornia to the Southeast Coast and inland to parts of the Darling Downs and
Central Highlands have received well below average rainfall in the first four
months of the year.

The end of April
marks the official closure of the tropical cyclone season. This past cyclone
season was very quiet, with no cyclones crossing the east coast of Queensland. In fact only one cyclone affected any part of the state, when Tropical Cyclone
Nelson made landfall in the southeast Gulf area in early February.Occasional bursts of monsoon activity were largely confined to the northern tropics for much of the season.

Temperature

Mean maximum
temperatures for April were above average over most of the interior of the
state, with temperatures reaching over 3 degrees above average in the southwest. Taroom and Monto both recorded their highest average maximum temperatures for April on record. See the list of new temperature records for details.

Parts
of Cape York Pensinsula and a few pockets along the coast were cooler than
average. Elsewhere temperatures did not vary significantly from average.

Average minimum
temperatures were typically within a degree of average in most places.Exceptions included the southwest of the
state and parts of the Central Highlands which recorded warmer than average
minimum temperatures for the month, while parts of the Northern Goldfields and
Warrego were cooler.

Notes

This statement has been prepared based on information available at
1 pm on Tuesday 1 May 2007.
Some checks have been made on the data, but it is possible that results will change
as new information becomes available.

Normals are long-term means based on observations from all
available years of record, which vary widely from site to site.
They are not shown for sites with less than 10 years of record, as they
cannot then be calculated reliably. *In this case, normals from a
nearby suitable site may be included to calculate statistics
(these are marked with an *).

The median
is sometimes more representative than the
mean
of "normal" rain.

The Rank indicates how rainfall this time compares with the climate record for the site,
based on the
decile ranking
(very low rainfall is in decile 1, low in decile 2 or 3,
normal in decile 4 to 7, high in decile 8 or 9
and very high is in decile 10).
The Fraction of normal shows how much rain has fallen this time as a
percentage of the long-term mean.